“North Korea gave its version of a diplomatic verdict Wednesday on President Trump’s recent trip to Asia: He’s a coward who deserves to die,” USA Today reports.
“Pyongyang’s state media slammed Trump for insulting North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un while on a five country tour of Asia. It said the American president, who Kim has feuded with for months, deserves the death penalty.”
After two years of mending fences after a failed presidential bid, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) “has clawed his way back. His numbers have inched up each of the past four quarters, and his approval rating is now back in the mid-to-high 40s,” according to James Hohmann.
“As the GOP primaries continued without him from New Hampshire to South Carolina and beyond, Walker convened the first of more than 100 ‘listening sessions’ in all 72 of Wisconsin’s counties. His advance team would set up two whiteboards in the front of every room. The governor would spend the first 20 minutes asking attendees to say something positive about the state, which he’d write down. Then he’d spend the next hour asking how Wisconsin could be better, filling up the second whiteboard. He tried to talk as little as possible.”
“The governor offered several concrete proposals in his budget around the themes that came up again and again, such as opioid abuse and broadband access, but he said the most important result of the sessions was conveying to Wisconsinites that he had not ‘moved on.'”
“Democrats wrested control of New Mexico’s largest city from the GOP on Tuesday as New Mexico State Auditor Tim Keller (D) easily won a race to become Albuquerque’s next mayor,” CBS News reports.
Keller beat Albuquerque City Councilor Dan Lewis (R) with 62% to 38% “in a race that centered on the city’s raising crime rates and its struggling economy.”
“Sources tell Page Six exclusively that the shortest-ever-tenured White House communications director has been meeting with publishers about a planned tome that’s being repped by Trident Media Group… While the Mooch has previously penned finance books, a source tells us of the new project: ‘It’s about his time at the White House — all 10 days of it!’”
Fox News host Sean Hannity walked back his original remarks insinuating that the five women accusing Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore (R) of sexual assault when they were teenagers might be lying, Politico reports.
Said Hannity: “For me, the judge has 24 hours. You must immediately and fully come up with a satisfactory explanation for your inconsistencies that I just showed.”
In a prospective 2020 match up, a new Politico/Morning Consult poll finds former Vice President Joe Biden leads President Trump in a possible presidential race, 46% to 35%.
“Biden’s 11-point margin is actually smaller than the poll’s previous question, in which voters are asked whether they will vote to reelect Trump, or for a generic Democrat. The generic Democrat leads Trump, 48 percent to 34 percent, the poll shows.”
Sam Baker: “Senate Republicans’ latest tax proposal includes a provision to repeal the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate. It’s a risky maneuver, but one that GOP leaders waded into with at least an outward projection of confidence, saying they believed they had 50 votes for the overall tax package.”
“Remember ‘skinny repeal’? The repeal bill that all but three Senate Republicans voted for on the express condition that it not become law? Because, as Sen. Lindsey Graham put it, ‘the skinny bill as policy is a disaster’? The policy is basically the same this time around.”
“That said, none of the three senators who killed skinny repeal — Susan Collins, John McCain or Lisa Murkowski — has said repealing the individual mandate would be a deal-breaker for their tax votes.”
A new Politico/Morning Consult poll finds 56% of voters think President Trump and the company he built will benefit from proposed changes to the tax code, but fewer than three in 10 expect those changes to help them.
“Steve Louro, a Republican donor who hosted an event for Donald Trump at his Long Island home last year, abruptly quit his post as regional finance chairman for the state’s Republican Party over objections to the Republican-led tax bill advancing through Congress,” the New York Times reports.
Said Louro: “The bill that’s going to get passed is not going to take care of the American people. It’s a disgrace.”
He added: “The Republican Party took control of the government against all odds, and the bottom line is they fucked it up. It’s a disgrace. It’s going to hurt a lot of middle-class Republicans.”
Rep. Jackie Speier (D-CA) “revealed that two current members of Congress, who she wouldn’t name, have sexually harassed staffers,” Fox 5 News reports.
Said Speier: “These harasser propositions such as ‘are you going to be a good girl,’ to perpetrators exposing their genitals, to victims having their private parts grabbed on the House floor.”
“Between 1997 and 2014, a little known Congressional fund paid out $15.2 million to 235 people who made sexual harassment claims in Congress.”
A new FOX10 News/Strategy Research poll in Alabama conducted just yesterday finds Roy Moore (R) leading Doug Jones (D) in the U.S. Senate race. 49% to 43% with 8% undecided.
Key finding: “Of those who indicated they would vote in the December 12 election, Moore lost 3 percentage points from the poll two weeks ago while Jones showed a 2 percent increase in support. Undecided voters went from 7 percent to 8 percent.”
“The Republican National Committee is withdrawing its support for besieged Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore, leaving him increasingly isolated as he confronts charges of sexual misconduct with teenagers,” Politico reports.
“Even before allegations surfaced against Moore, the committee believed he was in trouble. Internal RNC polling conducted around a week ago showed him leading his Democratic opponent by just two percentage points.”
At least one person in WKRG-TV‘s viewing area received a robocall seeking more damaging information about Alabama U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore (R).
Here is the text of that voicemail message:
Hi, this is Bernie Bernstein, I’m a reporter for the Washington Post calling to find out if anyone at this address is a female between the ages of 54 to 57 years old willing to make damaging remarks about candidate Roy Moore for a reward of between $5000 and $7000 dollars. We will not be fully investigating these claims however we will make a written report. I can be reached by email at albernstein@washingtonpost.com, thank you.
The Washington Post issued a statement: “The Post has just learned that at least one person in Alabama has received a call from someone falsely claiming to be from The Washington Post. The call’s description of our reporting methods bears no relationship to reality. We are shocked and appalled that anyone would stoop to this level to discredit real journalism.”
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell “deepened his bid to persuade Roy Moore to drop out of the race for an open Alabama Senate seat after accusations the Republican candidate engaged in sexual misconduct with teenage girls,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
McConnell “suggested he wanted Attorney General Jeff Sessions to run as a write-in candidate instead for his old seat, and he said that if Alabama voters elect Mr. Moore in the Dec. 12 vote, he would immediately face an ethics investigation.”
Meanwhile, the Daily Beast reports Steve Bannon “is keeping the door open to ditching” Moore.
“Senate Republican leaders have decided to include a major change to their fast-moving tax cut bill that would repeal a key plank of the Affordable Care Act, trying to accomplish two of their top domestic priorities in a single piece of legislation,” the Washington Post reports.
“Republicans had so far resisted making the change, worried that injecting health care politics into the process could imperil the tax bill, but many of their members have supported the idea and they appear on the verge of including it.”
New York Times: “Repealing the so-called individual mandate, as President Trump had urged, would help Republicans with the difficult math problem they face in refining their tax plan. But it also risks reigniting the contentious debate over health care that Republicans found themselves mired in for much of the year.”
Jonathan Chait: “The Republican Establishment is trying to maneuver out of the binary choice of electing Roy Moore or putting their control of the upper chamber at risk by exploring exotic schemes, like voting to deny Moore a seat if he wins and replacing him with another appointed Republican. But if their machinations fail, they’ll be faced with a stark choice.”
“It’s easy to feel superior about this when opposition to grotesque treatment of teenage girls lines up neatly with your own party’s well-being. If you’re a liberal, ask yourself what you would do if the circumstances were reversed. Give the other party a Senate seat and a possible majority, and forfeit your control of staffing the Cabinet, appointing judges, and passing laws you consider vital for the country’s future? Or allow one of the votes for those things to be cast by a sexual predator?”
BuzzFeed News: “On Aug. 3 of last year, just as the U.S. presidential election was entering its final, heated phase, the Russian foreign ministry sent nearly $30,000 to its embassy in Washington. The wire transfer, which came from a Kremlin-backed Russian bank, landed in one of the embassy’s Citibank accounts and contained a remarkable memo line: ‘to finance election campaign of 2016.'”
“That wire transfer is one of more than 60 now being scrutinized by the FBI and other federal agencies investigating Russian involvement in the U.S. election.”
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.